What are the main obstacles to reaching a ceasefire agreement in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages?

After achieving a midnight “breakthrough” in the negotiations, Qatar reportedly presented both Israel and Hamas with a draft agreement on Monday Ceasefire agreement The war in Gaza will be ended, Reuters news agency reported, citing an official familiar with the talks.

The official told Reuters that the talks were attended by the heads of the Israeli Shin Bet and Mossad, Steve Witkoff, who will become the US envoy when President-elect Trump takes office next week, and the Prime Minister of Qatar. Reuters also reported that officials from the Biden administration are believed to have participated.

“The next 24 hours will be crucial to reaching the agreement,” the official told Reuters.

“We’re not there yet, but there is potential for real progress,” an official close to the talks told CBS News.

What happened in the ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas?

Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect talks for more than a year with the aim of ending the conflict The war in Gaza And the return of dozens of hostages held by militants in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

On Sunday, President Biden spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the ongoing negotiations. The White House said the two leaders discussed the deal based on the arrangement Biden outlined last year. The Biden administration is pushing to reach an agreement before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

But despite intense mediation by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, the talks have repeatedly faltered over several key issues including the details of the exchange, whether the ceasefire will be permanent and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

With each side accusing the other of retreat, the war continued.

Dozens of Palestinians are killed every day in Israeli raids, and most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people live in filthy camps, and their neighborhoods have been turned into rubble. Humanitarian groups are struggling to provide much-needed aid, and experts have warned of famine.

In Israel, the families of the hostages organized weekly marches to demand an agreement to release them, fearing that their loved ones would die in the harsh conditions of their captivity the longer the fighting continued.

What are the main points of contention in reaching a ceasefire agreement?

Hamas and other groups are still holding about 100 hostage who were captured in the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped about 250. The Israeli military announced a third attack from the dead hostages but suspects The real number may be about half.

Hamas demands the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants convicted of orchestrating attacks that resulted in the deaths of civilians. Israel is reluctant to release these prisoners, especially since one of the masterminds of the 2023 attack, slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, was a former prisoner released in such a deal.

The two sides exchanged lists of names, with Israel demanding more information about the hostages still alive to ensure they exit first. Hamas says it needs at least a short truce to determine the status of the hostages because they are being held by different groups in various secret locations.

The emerging deal calls for a multi-phase plan. In the first phase, Hamas will release the most vulnerable hostages and Israeli forces will withdraw from some areas, allowing some Palestinians to return to their homes and increase humanitarian aid.

In the second step – which will be negotiated during the first step – the remaining living hostages will be released in exchange for a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Hamas said it would not release the remaining hostages without guarantees that the war would end. The Israeli attack killed more than 46,000 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to local health authorities, who did not specify the number of militants killed.

Hamas is likely to fear that Israel will resume its attack – and increase its intensity – once the hostages are released and the militants lose their most valuable bargaining chip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to do so. He says Israel will not end the war until it destroys Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and ensures that the Palestinian armed group no longer poses a threat.

The lack of trust goes both ways: Israelis fear that Hamas will drag out negotiations into the second phase, extending the ceasefire indefinitely while the hostages suffer.

The talks almost collapsed due to disagreements

The talks nearly collapsed last summer when Netanyahu said Israel would maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphia Corridor, a strip of land along the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Israel says Hamas has long smuggled weapons into Gaza through tunnels under the corridor, and that it must control the area to prevent Hamas from rebuilding. Egypt, a key mediator, says it closed the tunnels years ago and opposes any Israeli presence on the Gaza side of its border.

Israel also demanded a mechanism to inspect people returning to their homes in northern Gaza, from which about a million people fled after Israeli evacuation orders at the beginning of the war. Their return is a major demand of Hamas, the details of which are still being worked out.

Israel says those returning to the north must be searched for weapons. This may require an Israeli presence in what is known as the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of closed roads and military installations extending from the border to the sea south of Gaza City.

The Palestinians oppose any permanent Israeli occupation, although Hamas has shown flexibility regarding the timetable for Israeli withdrawal.

Israel says Hamas will never be able to rule Gaza again but has not yet supported a realistic plan to form an alternative government. With no internal rivals, Hamas was able to quickly regroup after the Israeli operations, even in the most affected areas, and still controls a large portion of the territory.

The Biden administration has long sought a grand deal under which a reformed Palestinian Authority would rule the post-war Gaza Strip with the support of Arab and Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, which would also take the historic step of establishing ties with Israel.

But Arab and Muslim leaders say they will not sign such plans unless they include a path to establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Israeli government opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state and has ruled out any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Netanyahu says Israel will maintain open security control while delegating governance to politically independent Palestinians. But no one seems to have volunteered, and Hamas has threatened anyone who cooperates with Israel in administering the area.

However, Hamas said it was willing to cede control of Gaza to other Palestinians. Late last year, it approved an Egyptian-brokered plan to form a group of independents to govern the region under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, which has not yet accepted the proposal.

Hamas has also demanded the lifting of the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after it seized power in 2007, which experts say is necessary to rebuild Gaza.

However, lifting the blockade would allow Hamas to claim a major victory and ultimately rebuild its military capabilities. This is another unacceptable matter for Israel.